Canvas
by Ravenclaw Red
Summary: Because the first brushstroke is not always the most important.


A/N: I was sort of just drifting in and out of consciousness in bed in front of my laptop while I tried imagining a story half-asleep when I came across this little train of thought and decided it would be interesting to follow through with it :3. It was intended to be Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's (AKA 'Felling') gift request, since she broke my lucky number 7 reviews for my Assassin's Creed story but I decided I will write something else for her since I want it to have a little more lighthearted feeling to it than this one has :3 Hope you enjoy! : D

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He's not fourteen anymore.

He's seventeen now and he doesn't dream about boats sailing across the oily waters of a scorching beach through rosy sunsets that stretch out far beyond their wildest imaginings. He doesn't talk about blitzball or how he hates playing with Tidus because he's certain that the blonde is cheating whenever he beats him and that Wakka only likes to play with him because he gets to thump him with the hard surface of the ball repeatedly and he later can't complain to his parents because they were playing a game and blitzball is a sport of tackles and shoves and bloody underwater brawls. He doesn't race with the other kids because he says he's too old, too worn and too world-weary to sprint across the island's obstacles like he used to because he knows that it's pointless to waste time running around an island because your home is there, safe and secure and it won't be going anywhere anytime soon.

He doesn't want to go back to school.

It's a waste of time and life and he already knows everything he needs to know to survive, he says. School is too dark and brooding and he's tired of cramped spaces and the endless chatter of people who complain about their lives when there's nothing complicated or difficult about them. He says they don't know what life is about because they're just sitting there at school reading about false history and useless explanations that always fall flat after thorough examination. They're all blind because they've never been out of their school, out of their homes and out of their pathetic little island. The world is more than just water and earth and skies. There are hearts and there are heartless and there's dark and light but they wouldn't know about that because all they care about is their school, the cute girls sitting in front of them with the too-short skirts and enough bust to make young boys yearn and little girls weep with envy and their underage drinking and smoking in dark corners when they tell their parents they're at their friend's house 'studying'.

Instead, he waits for her outside school and walks her home.

He takes her book bag and slings it across one broad leather-clad shoulder and always interlaces his fingers with hers, so she's fine with it. She likes it when he touches her because it reminds her that under the façade he's still the boy she had met after an unfortunate turn of events in her own world. He is warm and alive and he feels male and vital under her fingertips. Her pulse quickens when his thumb absent-mindedly caresses the inside of her palm every now and then when they walk and she doesn't know why but the feeling always starts out as a shock of delight in the pit of her stomach and then turns into liquid fire that burns and yearns to be quenched in the hollow between her legs. But she doesn't tell him because she's not sure what he'll say to her if she does. Instead, she quietly walks with him every afternoon and steals glances at his face and his captivating blue eyes and the fascinatingly male lips and wonders how the closely cropped golden brown hair atop his head would feel like under her fingertips.

Months pass and he's still there.

She half expected him to disappear, to fly up in his neon-colored spaceship with the ill-tempered duck and the clumsy dog man but he's still there beside her, quietly walking her to schools in the mornings and back home in the afternoons. She doesn't know why he barely talks but she's convinced he will tire of his own silence soon, because Sora was always too loud and too happy for his own good. It was what she had always admired about him. He was always nice and the warmth of the smiles he gave her rivaled the sun and the glint in his eyes outshined it. She was addicted to him like Wakka was addicted to blitzball, like Sophie is addicted to fashion and heavy make-out session with her boyfriend. But he's quiet now and his smiles are so rare that each one is a treasure to be cherished. She finally tells him one day when he walks her in the direction of her house, his face pinched into that bland expression that makes her feel dead inside and cold on the outside. She says she wants her old Sora back, the one who was always so carefree and warm and not this new Sora, who is cold and calculating and cynical. He laughs and tells her it doesn't work that way.

He doesn't take her home that day.

They go to a remote spot in the beach and he takes off his leather jacket and she watches as the silver of his jewelry shines like water under the sun's light at his wrists and neck and ears and she realizes she had forgotten about his silver bracelet and necklace because he never takes his leather jacket off but she doesn't think about if for long because the plain white T-shirt he wears come off next and for the first time in over ten years she gets to see his naked upper torso. He's not fourteen anymore, she reminds herself in a chiding voice as she stares at the expanse of wiry muscle that covered his hard chest. His back faces the sun and blocks the sun's glare as she sits on the sandy floor looking up at him, her fey eyes glued to the shadows that made the hard angles of his muscles seem harder, the grooves where taunt skins stretched across heavy bone darker in the shadows and she doesn't hesitate when she reaches out to brush her fingers attentively across the ridges of his stomach. They feel warm but they clench under her inexperienced touch and she takes her hand away, her cheeks stinging with pink as she looks up into the murky depths of his eyes.

"I'm sorry." She says the words quietly because she knows it soothes him but the muscles of his stomach are still clenched like he's in pain and she suddenly feels heartbroken because she doesn't know anything about him anymore. "I should've never touched you without your permission."

The muscles of his throat shift, his Adam's apple twitching as he swallows heavily. He suddenly looks like he doesn't know what to do and she sees some of her Sora there when his lips part in a sigh and he looks down at her again. "Touch me again."

So gets busy with the task he has just given her without a single word of complaint or hesitation. She touches him with one hand first, trailing over the startling male places, tracing over the bones of his ribs and around his belly button before deciding that she wants to use both hands to explore a torso she had once touched impersonally. She's not a baby, she's not fourteen either. She had been going to school for the past four years, she knows arousal when she sees it and it's clear that he's blatantly enjoying the intimate touches she gave him as she caressed his chest and abdomen.

"I want you to touch me, too." He looks like he's enjoying himself so much that she can't help but to ask the same thing of him and he complies by laying on the spot next to her and ordering to lay on her back while he timidly caresses her.

This was her Sora.

He wasn't being chilly or cynical now. His hands skim over the exposed flesh of her thighs, the fingertips slid delicately over her soft flushed skin. He says she smells sweet like the wildflowers that grow all over the entrance of their secret place during spring and her heart aches because she knows that this is the boy she fell in love with. He says she's the softest thing he's ever touched and that he doesn't want to hurt her. She says she's not made of glass and she sets out to prove it even though she only has a faint idea when it comes to the mechanics of coupling and even though she knows that they could be caught and that her mother won't be too happy about it if she finds out she still enjoys every second of the intimate connection.

Because she knows she loves him and he loves her back.

She knows it is right when he rests beside her and she feels him as a raspy breath against the crook of her neck, a calloused hand running up the length of her leg and heated bubbles of air against her skin while he presses his damp lips to her bare skin. The damp isn't sweat. The sweat had been swept away by a pleasant ocean breeze hours before, but the dampness is there because he's crying into her shoulder as he kisses her. She convinces herself that they are tears of happiness but she knows it isn't true because Sora never cries when he's happy and she had never pictured him crying after making love for the first time. He tells her that he doesn't know what to do with his life now that he's back on the island and there's no need for the key bearer. She tells him that before he was the key bearer he was her Sora and finally looks up and stops sniffling long enough to lift his head and give her a watery smile before kissing her again.

He says he still is her Sora but he's empty.

He says he doesn't know why he feels empty but he just does so he keeps quiet. He says he keeps quiet because he wants her to be happy and if he's sad all the time she'll be sad and then they both would be unhappy. He says he's sad because he's not the key bearer anymore and because he'll never see his friends again. He fingers the leather jacket he always wears and she remembers that Leon had handed the jacket over to him after making him his honorary apprentice and that it's emblazoned with his keybalde's symbol. He says he's afraid of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time because he had already lost a lot of friends and she's the only thing he's ever wanted and he doesn't want to lose her because he would feel dead.

She tells him not to feel dead because he's alive.

He's alive and warm and she would never leave his side for as long as she lived. He smiles at her and mutters something about Riku and Namine running away together to get hitched behind their parent's backs and she suggests they do the same. He says he couldn't do that, since her mother already considers him irresponsible because he had left school and did nothing but sleep all day. She says she doesn't care because she's still a dreamer and he's still her Sora and she's his Kairi and she's probably pregnant now anyways. He pales and asks her if she really is and she tells him she doesn't really know but that there's still a chance she might get pregnant with his baby and then he asks her what she would name their baby but she doesn't know if it's a boy or a girl or if she even is pregnant so she just tells him he's crazy and that he should really return to school. He laughs for the first time in months and kisses her over and over until the air leaves her lungs.

His eighteenth birthday comes.

He's not wearing the leather jacket anymore because he doesn't want to damage it and he's not cynical or cold because he knows that she'll always be there and that she won't let him kiss her if he is. He's warm like the sand after hours under the punishing rays of the burning sun and he plays blitzball even though he's still convinced that Riku and Wakka and Tidus are all plotting something terrible against him and that he'll probably lose a limb someday soon. He says he hates school but that if he's stuck there in the island forever he might as well do something productive and that he was getting tired from sleeping all day anyways. She wants to laugh at his jokes but she's too tired, so she just lays in bed and chuckles weakly. Math exams were getting hard now and her swollen feet only made things difficult for her so she often missed classes and spent hours in the bed of the small house he'd bought for them by working after school. He says it's okay because babies are heavy and she is small and fragile and the baby is taking a lot from her so that it's fine if she stops going to school altogether because he wants the baby to be born healthy and he wants her to be happy and relaxed because this is the only chance she'll get before the baby is born.

When she says she wants to name him Dylan he doesn't complain.

"It means son of wave." He understands why she wants to name their son Dylan. The ocean had been the start of everything, the promise of adventure and a future together. He smiles at her a thinks out loud and she listens carefully and smiles at her young husband while he rubs her aching feet.

He says he hopes that their son likes the island. He says he hopes their son dreams of a different life spreading before him like a blank canvas and fills the whites with boats sailing across the oily waters of a scorching beach through rosy sunsets that stretch out far beyond his wildest imaginings.

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A/N: Not much of a plot…it was more like a brain spasm XD ahahaha, lol. Well, hoped you liked it anyways. If you see some parts that are sort of its because I've never tried this narrative style before and it was difficult but my brain told me to write it like that so I did DX For better or for worse, eh? ^^


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